Friday 29 November 2013 06.50 EST
First published on Friday 29 November 2013 06.50 EST

Jonathan Wilson's fabulous recent album, Fanfare, featured the cream of the California music scene, including Jackson Browne and two-thirds of Crosby, Stills and Nash. None of these heavyweights has made it to this former working men's club in Leeds, but the singer-songwriter has certainly brought the west coast vibe. The crystal-clear sound is perhaps what Fleetwood Mac were striving for when they spent years in multitrack studios in the 1970s. Wilson – all beard and windswept anguish – could hardly look more like his Beach Boy namesake, Dennis, if he strolled in with sand in his facial hair.

The band – particularly the very long-haired bassist – could have stepped straight out of a 1975 edition of The Old Grey Whistle Test, and there are times – the lengthy Hammond organ solos – when you think this was exactly why punk rock had to happen. However, Wilson isn't pastiching 1970s MOR; this is more a movingly heartfelt, timeless and transcendental homage. It's a very long time since a west coast musician penned songs as great as Dear Friend or the lovely Desert Trip. Imagery drips from these numbers like old rainwater, with endless possibilities in lines such as Lovestrong's: "Mystic music, come and save me from my memories."

With beautiful songs tumbling from him, Wilson understandably wants to play them all. An exhaustive – and exhausting – setlist takes in his two albums and more. There are frazzled guitar solos and jazz drumming, while Love to Love is a textbook exercise in direct songwriting economy. As the clock nudges the two-and-a-half hour mark, magic has started to make way for indulgence: an absorbing show could be even better if he judiciously removed the flab.

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